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a beautiful, incredible, awful, harrowing book. upsetting in all the right places. appropriately grim look at the American prison system, like a somehow less-hopeful hunger games.

you know how people talk about 1984 and similar books "predicting the future", when actually those stories just an exaggerated comment on the world at the time of writing? yeah

Do you want to know that feeling? Join me in feeling all of the emotion and read Chain-Gang All-Stars. It's a true inheritor to the Hunger Games in that yes, there is violence, televised, glorified violence, but also this is a stunning critique of the entertainment industry and America. Chain-Gang All-Stars also raises it's metaphorical weaponry at the justice system of the United States and just. Fucking. murders it. The way it bounces between the future sci-fi horrific penal system and the current horrific penal system and shows how close we are to making that jump.....

Humanizing and horrifying, this book is, in terms of words, an easy enough read for me, but in terms of topic? I had to keep putting it down. I feel like Loretta has stuck a fucking hammer in my ribcage. I feel horrible for making that comparison. The ending is ouagh.

The characters are perfectly imperfect and human and fucked up and sorry and not and terrible and loving and trying and trying and trying so so hard.

grah.

Amazing. I am going to go and buy myself a copy because I read a library copy.

and he was like, "has this ever happened to you before?"

and i said, "oh yeah loads of times, since i was a toddler."

and he said, "why are you just now getting help?"

and i said, "well recently when i hit the 60 hour mark i've started hallucinating birds. and that's new."

and he said, "what do you mean, birds?"

and i said, "i don't know, i think they're house sparrows"

and he said, "i didn't mean what kind of birds"